Verdict: Manam in spite of not being an excuse to elevate the presence of the Akkineni's and having some true-to-life moments fails to go beyond the obviousness in conventional family entertainers.

Verdict: Manam in spite of not being an excuse to elevate the presence of the Akkineni's and having some true-to-life moments fails to go beyond the obviousness in conventional family entertainers. less

Manam is a three-tier generational story with several fine layers of near real-life, sub-altern, watch-beyond-the-screen subtextual stories running around the plot. But since the plot and the story are quite stupid and unbelievably badly done, we must enjoy this bold projection of one of the five powerful families of our cinema industry. Let us not deny the fact that when the rich and the powerful celebrate, the world watches in awe. This film is no different and no less than a celebration of a family that , at the end of it, declares another heir incumbent much to our moblike audience's thrills.

Manam, written and directed by Vikram Kumar and produced by the "Akkineni Family" is the story of a strange set of incidents revolving around a clocktower, a day in February and three men scattered in time with hillarious love stories. What happens during the course of the film is a run of the mill drama, the very very routine comedy and a set of tragically predictable incidents. The old and the grand are giving way for the young and new. At the cost of our cinema.

Starring - Akkineni Nageshwar Rao, Akkineni Nagarjuna, Akkineni Naga Chaitanya ( though not in this particular order of lineage ), Samantha , Shriya, Ali, Brahmanandam and a few other people whose names we cant remember.

Go kill yourself, now that you have wasted five minutes of your life reading this review.

( This review is merely a piece of fiction as transpired in the writer's head. All content is subject to his perspective's jurisdiction and any brickbats and discussions on right and wrong are welcome.)

Comments

Verdict - Manam, a rarity you witness in films that has bigwigs, sticks to its tale and has the guts to travel beyond its cast-adoring formalities.

While the presence of three generations in a single movie could have been a distracting opportunity for the director Vikram Kumar to go gaga in el...
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While the presence of three generations in a single movie could have been a distracting opportunity for the director Vikram Kumar to go gaga in elevating their on-screen stature and the chemistry, he doesn't succumb to the ideas that most of his contemporaries would have easily did. He neither wants to give up on his screenplay-driven story, his rebirth themed plot nor the lighthearted touches surrounding it all. The characters stay as per the script and if you have a producer who only wants to glorify the cinematic legacies of ANR within a film, he wouldn't have bothered to give as much screen-time to Samantha and Shriya Saran in the very same film. The cast feels complete and each of them are equally dedicated to the exercise of making a simple film with fine touches of novelty, humour and emotion.

From the bespectacled look that Naga Chaitanya bears to the homemaker Samantha, the progress of the story doesn't stop the director Vikram Kumar from delving deep into their histrionics. Whether it's hatred, ambiguity, misunderstanding or love, the foundation laid to justify the emotion is immensely believable. The film goes back and forth from being a periodical to a contemporary outing. If it's the wacky humour that the latter phase provides, the past helps you peep into the little-nothing pleasures, in-depth relationships during which the blissful portions of Nagarjuna and Shriya tug your heart-strings. The portions surrounding the modern era aren't compromised either where a modern couple is introduced with a 'selfie' moment in a rainbow backdrop.

There aren't the usual cinematic fluffy flashbacks justifying reincarnation and destiny. Few elements such as the clock-tower, the perilousness surrounding the car rides, faster heart-beats between a lovestruck couple are placed to portray the connect between those individuals who are to meet for a purpose. Most of the characters have sweet sketches with a good balance of sense and innocence, spare Shriya Saran who could have been more than the good-looking doctor.

Provided Manam had the same electric momentum as prior to the interval in the latter parts, it should have been a trend-setter. The surprises mostly end within the first half and probably, it's the same reason that the mechanical screenplay doesn't strike a chord as much as you would have hoped it to. However, the film unleashes some fine performances, especially from Naga Chaitanya who certainly looks to have arrived as an actor with this. So, is Samantha, who gets her best role after Yeto Vellipoyindi Manasu. ANR's presence is impacting but minimal. While Nagarjuna gets a lot of time to put in his experience into place, Shriya manages to latch onto something worthy after a long while. Manam is just the saccharine-coated, heart-warming outing that audiences in today's generation can afford to experiment with, ignoring its negligible follies. Try not missing this.

Comments

If we did live in a world which the movie dynasties believe in, where every one of the countless slow motion montages are golden to an audience com...
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If we did live in a world which the movie dynasties believe in, where every one of the countless slow motion montages are golden to an audience comprising of uneducated peasants, low waged factory workers and those who go clubbing now and then, broadly classified. If that were the case this epic drama bringing together 3 + 1(cameo) generations of princely survival in filmdom where every generation dumbs it down for the next would have a been a landmark event for me and other peasant friends who would talk about it for years to come, the grand ceremony where I got to see the kings of yester, now, tomorrow and the day after all at once, very Game of Thrones. Sad reality is a blazing summer day in Hyderabad and my morning was full of questions about the number of dimensions in which this film sucked. Confusion is suffering.

At a one liner idea level this film does have something, a good pitch for a dynasty multi starrer. The screenplay however maps it with a bit too much of the obvious, coincidence galore and an amateur mash up of ideas from the reincarnation genre. And with the stellar cast of Naga Chaitanya and others the film holds on to its confusing charm. Was it really that bad? What about the scenes with all three of them? There were 3 of those, I guess. ANR would have done well? Eh...Nag was okay, kind of, but, the voice still gets me.

I’ll write this down so that I remember it:

I solemnly swear to make a list and wholesomely hate any Telugu film that casts a fair, chubby kid and then directed to do the ‘retarded’ sweet.

Is that how they get us used to it, like get us into it? We are watching these films. Shit!